A New Agency Challenges White-Washed Beauty

A New Agency Challenges White-Washed Beauty

Meet Evy, Genesis, and Nicola–three new faces repped by Lorde Inc., an emerging street casting modeling agency devoted to promoting diversity. “We wanted to create a space that was both non-normative and safe for people of color who seldom see people that look like us in magazines or art,” explains Nafisa Kap who co-founded the agency last May. “Lorde Inc. is our effort to try to insert more diversity in mainstream visual spaces, but it’s also a way for people of color to support each other and promote our beauty among our own communities.”

Kap started Lorde Inc. in London, where she also called out the whiteness on the runway last year during London Men’s Fashion Week with the hashtag #allwhitecast. The agency has since expanded to New York, Vancouver, and Toronto. Evy, Genesis, and Nicola are all based in Vancouver. Kap scouted each of them herself—Evy she found online, Genesis she knew from before, and Nicola she spotted at a cafe. “I thought holy fuck she’s hot so I went up and gave her my card.”

So far all the models have been really into the ethos behind what Kap is doing. “The dopest thing about scouting people for me is when I start to get to know our models and talk more about the politics,” she explains. “Everyone I’ve signed so far is completely with it but they all have their own stories of being tokenized, racialized, discriminated against, so it’s been an extreme pleasure to get to know these people, have this shared interest, crack them open, and hear their stories.”